Bounce Back: Overcoming Setbacks to Succeed in Business and in Life

SECTION I

• • •

IT’S ABOUT ABOUT YOU

CHAPTER 1

THE TRIGGER EVENT

COMING TO GRIPS WITH WHAT HAS HAPPENED

Numb.

I was just numb all over. In the span of about half an hour I went from near ecstasy to near anguish. The confetti was falling for the wrong team, I thought. That should be us out there celebrating a national title. Instead, we were taking a long short-walk to our locker room. Man, that should have been us, I said to no one in particular.

On a muggy night in San Antonio on the first Monday of April 2008, my former team—the University of Memphis Tigers—was on the cusp of winning the NCAA title game over the University of Kansas. Our team had lost just once in thirty-nine prior games that season (to Tennessee by four points). We had won more single-season games than any program in NCAA history, and with two minutes and twelve seconds left in the national championship contest, we led the Jayhawks by nine points, 60–51.

With 2:12 showing on the scoreboard, the cavernous Alamodome was filled with 43,257 blue-and-white–clad fans (the colors of both teams), but it was our Tiger supporters who were screaming loudest and enjoying the moment the most. Yes, they were celebrating—and they should have been. The game was all but over.

When you’re up nine with just over two minutes to go, you’re supposed to win the game. It’s that simple. Our best player—and the eventual No. 1 overall pick in the 2008 NBA draft and the 2008–09 NBA Rookie of the Year—Derrick Rose was having one of the great second halves in Final Four history on his way to eighteen points and eight assists. We had Kansas, one of the most storied basketball programs of all time, on the ropes, and we probably only needed one more basket to knock them out.

Now understand this: Memphis hadn’t ever won a national championship in anything. It was just the third Final Four appearance in Memphis school history (Kansas was making its thirteenth trip), and to be honest, our program wasn’t perceived as a Fortune 500 operation the way schools like Duke, UCLA, Kentucky, and North Carolina are. Memphis wasn’t supposed to crash this party in San Antonio. But ever since I’d arrived in the Bluff City, I’d built the program as if we were one of the blue bloods. In everything we did, from recruiting to travelling, I instilled the belief that we were a premier program on a par with any in the country. We recruited (and got) McDonald’s All-Americans, and we fostered future pros. I never accepted that people didn’t think of Memphis that way, and I never allowed my teams to think that way. My teams will always strive for perfection and settle for excellence. I hope you’ll adopt that mantra in your own bounce back.

We deserved just as much respect and rankings as anyone, so long as we were putting in our maximum effort. Pedigree is of little importance to me; it’s what you do game to game and season to season that determines what kind of program you will be.

We had been doing those things consistently for over half the decade. In 2008 we advanced to our third straight Elite 8 and finally busted through to the final weekend and the final game.

Our 2007–08 Tiger team embraced my anyone, anywhere, anytime philosophy, and with three NBA draft picks among my starting five (Rose, Chris Douglas-Roberts, and Joey Dorsey), we had unparalleled leadership and a supporting cast that combined experience with exceptional talent. We had been to those two consecutive Elite 8s with our core group, and the 2007–08 campaign was the culmination of an unprecedented run of 104 wins and just 10 losses in three seasons.

It brought us to that Monday night of April 7, 2008, before an international TV audience and an arena filled with luminaries, from Jesse Jackson (who spoke to our team prior to the game) to Bill Russell.

With two minutes and twelve seconds left, there would have to be a perfect storm of misfortune for us to lose the game.

We didn’t know it at the time, but the seas were churning as Kansas scored on its next possession to cut the lead to seven with 1:57 left. Their coach and my friend, Bill Self, called a time-out, and when we inbounded the ball after the time-out, it got stolen, and Kansas hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to four. A few seconds later, Joey, my center, who had been hampered by fouls throughout, finally fouled out.

Right about then, it struck me we might lose the game. Oddly, I reconciled those thoughts by quickly telling myself that if we were to lose, it would be because it was part of a bigger design. Lord, I said to myself, I will deal with the outcome and your will. That helped to force those losing thoughts out of my mind. But it didn’t help to alter what was happening on the court. Kansas was doing everything right, and we were doing just about everything wrong.

With a minute left in the game, our lead was just two points. We missed three of our last four free throws in regulation, and Kansas’s Mario Chalmers hit a miracle 3-pointer to send the game into overtime after a desperation shot from midcourt in the final seconds by my forward Robert Dozier missed. I knew we were in trouble in the extra session because my guys were gassed, we were stunned, and we didn’t have Joey to rebound the ball. The perfect storm had happened, and it came at us with a fury as sudden as it was devastating.

Everything that had to go wrong for us to lose like we did happened. We had a late foul on Mario Chalmers, he had to make two free throws, and he did. Kansas’s Darrell Arthur had to make an unbelievable turnaround jumper on the baseline. We threw away the ball on the inbounds pass. Sherron Collins stole it and made a 3-pointer. We had our best two free-throw shooters at the line only to have them miss. Every little play, every moment, had to go right for Kansas and wrong for us, and it did.

And then, after all that, it took a miracle, once-in-a-lifetime shot from Mario Chalmers to send the game into overtime.

We ended up losing 75–68, and all I remember about walking off the floor at the Alamodome was the numbness. We went from the pinnacle to Oh, my gosh. And I’m telling you, it’s a fast sensation. This thing was bam-bam-bam-bam—what in the world just happened?

As Kansas celebrated and their fans rejoiced, my team headed to the locker room, dejected and dismayed. We were as close as you could be—two minutes and twelve seconds from being national champs. Another few feet from being 40–0. That’s the margin between glory and guilt. At the end of the day, we were chasing the stars and we bumped into the moon. We were that close.

As we all walked off that court—some of us with tears in our eyes, some with completely blank stares—I knew something that nobody else in our program knew: each and every one of us had just begun our own bounce back.

I also knew everyone was going to be looking to me for an answer—in the locker room, in the media room, and on the famed River Walk in San Antonio. They were going to turn to me and hope for an explanation or a justification. I never have a problem talking after a win or a loss, but this time was completely different from anything I’d ever experienced.

By the time I got into the locker room underneath the Alamodome’s stands, I knew I had to provide leadership and guidance for everyone associated with our program. These were eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-old kids, and you can be damn sure none of them had ever felt this horrible after a game in their lives. I had coaches, administrators, friends, and family who were all dealing with the devastation of the way we fell and the thump we made as we hit the ground.

I realized at that moment that I was not dealing with just my own shock and grief. I had to deal with everyone’s—from players to fans to assistants. I was the leader for those thirty-eight record-setting wins, and I was the leader for the two losses as well. Did I want to run and hide? You bet. But I realized—and you need to realize—that you’re not the only one feeling the pain and anguish. Everyone around you is hurting, and you better deal with them before you deal with yourself. That’s what being a coach, an executive, a parent, a son, or a daughter is all about during trying times. If you show weakness over the setback you have encountered, everyone around you will sense that uncertainty and fear, and it will only make things worse.

I allowed myself about five minutes of introspection and regret in the coaches’ locker room, and then I splashed some water on my face, adjusted my tie, and joined the players in their locker room. There were tears, anger, and disbelief all around the room. The shock was setting in and so was the realization of what had happened. At that moment, I remember thinking that I wished I could have just done one thing to get them over the hump in the game, because I could see how they were suffering. I could feel it. We were all hurting—everyone associated with Tiger basketball. Shock causes pain, and that sting lingers.

If I had given in to that emotion, it would have started everybody’s bounce back on the wrong foot. So I told my team exactly what I was feeling and let them know the hurt was normal.

I don’t want any of you to think you were the reason, I said to the young men in the locker room. "You did everything you were supposed to, and you put us in a position to win a national title. What happened out there is not on one person; it’s on all of us, including me as the coach. At the end of the day with that kind of lead, it comes back to me.

I am more proud of you guys than I’ve ever been, I said. "You gave me an unbelievable gift this whole season. We did things no other team has ever done in the history of college basketball. We were a dream team, and you cannot ever forget that. This was a dream season with a dream team. We energized and united our city.

Does this hurt right now? Do you feel like crap? I asked. That’s okay. That feeling will go away over time. Soon you’re going to remember the twenty-six straight wins, the undefeated conference record, and the family we built throughout the year. Look around—you may never play with some of these guys again, but you will always have the experience and memories of what we accomplished over forty games.

The words were probably ringing hollow, but I knew they had to be said in order for everyone to be able to move on. I hugged all my guys and my incredible staff, and then I prepared to face the media.

PractiCal Point: Remember, your trigger event will impact on others around you, so you need to be strong for them.

• • •

It’s not likely that your bounce back will kick off with a press conference with a couple hundred anxious, on-deadline writers and TV and radio people begging for that one money quote they can use in their column, game story, or broadcast. For that, you should be thankful.

I couldn’t avoid it though. The NCAA mandates coaches and selected players sit on the dais and answer media questions after a designated cooling off period. In a strange way, I knew that session would be an important step in our collective bounce back, as would the questions the rest of the team was answering in the locker room. It wasn’t enough to be gracious in defeat; this kind of loss required me to be humble, forgiving, and empathetic.

Hats off to Kansas. When you’re up nine with 2:12 left, you’re supposed to win the game, and that’s my fault, I said in my opening statement. I thought we were national champs, and that’s the great thing about college basketball and sports. I’m really disappointed but so proud of my guys. You know, again, as a coach, when you’re up five with whatever seconds left to go, you’re supposed to win that game. So I take as much responsibility in this. I’m disappointed for my team. I wish there were a few more things we could have done there to make it easier for them at the end. But I’m proud of them. They did everything they were supposed to do really against the odds, and they did it, and they were there, and it slips. I mean, it’s devastating to them.

I admit I was still kind of numb during that press conference. That happens. You’re numb to it all in the minutes and hours after your trigger event. I knew it was going to hit me like a ton of bricks the next day, realizing we’d had it in our grasp. I took a late walk with my staff on the River Walk after returning to the hotel and meeting with our fantastic fans and well-wishers.

I thought about what I had said to the media. With those words, I was doing a few things—first I was taking the burden off my team, which any good leader needs to do when the chips are down. It’s not a time to point fingers or place blame. No one thing cost us the game; it was a perfect storm of everything going right for Kansas, and everything going wrong for us.

Another important element of those immediate minutes and hours after the loss was to make sure that I and everyone involved with the program gave due credit to Kansas. The Jayhawks, under Bill Self, proved what it means to play to the final buzzer and never give up hope. They had just mastered their own bounce back. There was no shame in losing to that team, which had several eventual NBA draft picks, and we had to make sure people understood what an accomplishment they had achieved. Our failure was their success.

Understand that people will begin assessing you for your next job, relationship, or business deal as soon as they see you are dealing with a pitfall. From the moment your trigger event happens, you need to put on a good face.

Admittedly, there’s so much swirling when you are in the midst of a major life setback that you can’t possibly react to everything in the appropriate way—unless you have been there before.

And I had.

CHAPTER 2

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

YOUR FIRST BOUNCE BACK IS THE HARDEST

Before we can get too far into your bounce back, I think it’s important for you to see some game tape of the two major public bounce backs that I have been through in the past decade. We’ve already touched on the Kansas game. Please realize these reviews are not done to get sympathy from you or to bore you with details of my life experiences. What I want you to understand is this: not only have I bounced back from major setbacks, I’ve had two very different kinds of bounce backs. My first, when I was fired by the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, played out over several weeks and eventually months and years as I transitioned through all the bounce-back stages we will discuss over the course of this book.

For me, the circumstances of my firing by the Nets in March 1999 were much harder to deal with than my second trigger event (in the title game) because I had never had to bounce back from anything like that before. When the Nets fired me, I had just turned forty, and I was learning all about dealing with a sudden life change on the fly and under the eye of the vigilant New York sports media and a discerning fan base. Sure, I had close friends and mentors like Larry Brown helping me all along the way, but in those first hours, days, and weeks after the trigger event occurs, you feel like it’s you against the world, and that can be an overwhelming sensation.

But with every bounce back you have, you grow and you begin to understand that you’re far from alone in dealing with your setback. You also begin to understand that you are not going to have just one, two, or three bounce backs in your life. In fact, you’re never going to be done transforming yourself, your career, and your relationships. It’s worth keeping in mind that you learn the most about bouncing back when you are going through it.

I know the reason I was able to handle the 2008 Kansas loss so well was because I had been through the turmoil of the Nets firing in 1999 when I got publicly humiliated and smashed and survived it. When dealing with the title game loss, I knew from the New Jersey experience that I would wake up the next day and that each day it would get a little better—even though it was going to take time. I had lived through one public humiliation and because of that, I knew I could handle the after-math of the title game loss.

And you know what? I’ll be even better prepared for the next time I get dealt a setback.

Every bounce back you have—or are affected by—in life, you have to learn from. You have to assess what has happened and use that assessment to better yourself.

Bounce backs are like individual games throughout the season. No two are exactly the same; some include sudden swings, while others follow a logical back-and-forth progression. In any given season, my teams will have blow-out wins where everything is clicking and nail-biter losses that could have gone either way. Sometimes the team improves over the course of one game, and sometimes it takes two or three contests to see the improvement.

Just as each game develops at its own pace, so, too, will your bounce back. After every game I sit down and assess my team through film study and discussion with my assistants. You, too, should assess your performance frequently throughout the bounce back process. You will be wise to lean on the Kitchen Cabinet you will compile in Practice Plan #1 at the end of this chapter. Most of all, you have to always be honest with yourself. It does no good to base your bounce back on beliefs and perceptions that led you here in the first place. I always ask my teams and my players to own their performances, and I’m going to expect you to do the same. For my teams, that means taking responsibility for everything—the good and the bad—on the court and in their lives.

You need to own your bounce back in much the same manner.

Are you with me? Good. Here’s the game tape on the very beginning of my time with the Nets and the very end of my time in New Jersey; I’ll show you the way I went over what happened and how I behaved so that you can see how it’s done, and then it will be your turn.

• • •

In 1996, my eighth year at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, we had an incredible journey that included wins in our first twenty-six straight games, a No. 1 ranking, and the school’s first-ever appearance in the Final Four (which, as fate would have it, was played in the arena at the New Jersey Meadowlands complex). We lost in the national semifinals to Kentucky, but the accomplishments of that team will live forever in the annals of college basketball.

I was humbled that year to be named the national Naismith Men’s College Coach of the Year. It was the culmination of a total rebuilding project that saw us go 193–71 (.731) in that span as we reached three Sweet 16s, two Elite 8s and the Final Four. We went from one of the absolute worst programs in America (ranked 259th of 267 Division I schools in the 1980s) to one of the best.

Along the way, we captured the hearts and imaginations of an entire state, and we boosted the morale of a campus that had always been maligned as ZooMass. I started there when I was twenty-nine and wet behind the ears. By the time I left, I had seen and done things I never imagined possible.

When that ’96 season ended, the NBA’s New Jersey Nets contacted me about becoming their next head coach. It was always in the back of my mind that someday I would love the opportunity to coach in the greatest league in the world, so the prospect certainly intrigued me. The Elite 8 campaign the year before gave me confidence I could accept the challenge if it were ever presented to me. When the Nets—and others—expressed interest, I had to listen.

What I heard blew me away. They were giving me the keys to the castle, and in addition to being the head coach, I would hold the titles of executive vice president and head of basketball operations. After some negotiating, we settled on a five-year deal worth $15 million. It was the kind of package that was unheard of at the time, and after thinking long and hard about it and talking it over with my wife, Ellen, and trusted friends, I accepted the position on June 5, 1996.

It was far from an easy decision. I was giving up a job at UMass I could have had the rest of my life to go to an organization considered a laughingstock among the professional leagues. The Nets were always mentioned in the same breath as the Los Angeles Clippers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and at that time that was some bad company to be lumped in with. The Nets were dysfunctional and ridiculed, and as far as NBA jobs went, it was probably one of the least attractive in the league.

The job scared away a lot of folks, but I saw it as a chance to do something similar to what we had done at UMass. I embraced the challenge of building a franchise into a playoff contender and invigorating the fan base. It would take a heck of a lot of work and some serious dedication by all involved, but I believed in my heart of hearts we could turn the Nets into a respected NBA franchise.

The first year wasn’t easy; we went 26–56, but my second season with New Jersey we went 43–39 and made the playoffs as an eight seed. We were swept in three games by the Michael Jordan–led Chicago Bulls, but just making the playoffs in our second season in Jersey was a huge accomplishment. I’m not sure many people understood just how incredible it was. Put it this way: the Nets had finished under .500 in nine of the eleven seasons before I got there, and in five of those years the teams failed to win any more than twenty-six games. The franchise had not been out of the first round of the playoffs since 1984.

So, as you can imagine, I was feeling like we had things moving in the right direction. We were drawing well in terms of attendance, we had a new logo that fans embraced, and a new attitude that was palpable. A dedicated practice facility was being built, and free agents weren’t as hesitant to consider the Nets as an option. It was about as much as anyone could have expected.

But labor unrest loomed, and in 1998 the NBA slogged its way through a messy lockout by its owners that prohibited